Robert A. M. Stern

The Inquisitive Guest popped the question in the Pool Room at the Four Seasons restaurant to architect Robert A. M. Stern, who named projects by the designer of the space. “Philip Johnson’s corner table in the Grill Room and his Glass House in New Canaan,” he said. “I was in my first year of architecture school and people in my class said, ‘We want to go see the Glass House.’ So I looked him up in the phone book, and he said, ‘Sure, bring the boys down.’ Only there were seven girls in our class. . . .”

Madeline Stuart

“San Simeon, a.k.a. Hearst Castle, is one of the most extraordinary homes in the U.S., perhaps the world,” offered designer Madeline Stuart during the AD100 celebration. “It’s unbelievable for many reasons. [William Randolph Hearst’s] architect, Julia Morgan, was a woman—not a very common practice at that time. She was expected to incorporate elements that Hearst was finding virtually on a daily basis. Day after day, he would send these missives, telegraphs that would say, ‘Found ceiling in monastery. Stop. Need to incorporate. Stop.’”

Steven Gambrel

“Years ago, I went to [Frank Lloyd Wright’s] Fallingwater,” said designer Steven Gambrel at the AD100 gala. “Before, I had thought it wasn’t great, because I’d only seen it in pictures. But then I went with some friends, and we went swimming in the river after. When you experience Fallingwater in situ, it’s amazing. You have to go there to understand it.”

Vicente Wolf

Designer Vicente Wolf was pleased with his surroundings. “For a contemporary modern building, this is one of my favorites,” he said. “The Seagram Building is so fresh and timeless. And in Paris, I love l’Académie française. It’s curvilinear and small enough to be my home.”

Salman Rushdie

On his way into the storied Ziegfeld Theatre to see Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, author Salman Rushdie mentioned that British architect Richard Rogers is a pal. “I’ve always been inspired by his work. He did the Pompidou Center with Renzo Piano, the Lloyds building in London, and now he’s working in Shanghai. I’d like to see a great Richard Rogers project in New York.” Luckily for Rushdie, Rogers’s Three World Trade Center will be completed in 2016.

Idris Elba

“I love architecture,” said Idris Elba, who plays Nelson Mandela in the film. “When I’m in a car, back in London, I’m always gazing at the terraced houses. They’re magical. But there is not really one building that I love, except for the Shard. I think that the Shard is beautiful.”

The Edge

While Bono was speaking of the late Nelson Mandela, AD took his bandmate the Edge aside to discuss architecture. “Tadao Ando’s [Church of the Light] in Osaka,” he said. “With that beautiful cross-shaped window, so elegant and simple. And I heard when he first designed it, he didn’t want to have a roof, which makes me like him even more.”

Vern Yip

“Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute in La Jolla,” answered HGTV’s Vern Yip, who decorated Cipriani Wall Street with garlands for the 9th Annual UNICEF Snowflake Ball. “I love the power of his use of really basic concrete, just expanses of it, planes. Then there is a narrow channel of water that looks as if it runs down to the ocean. To me that’s just so powerful.”

Luca Dotti

At the Snowflake Ball, Audrey Hepburn’s son Luca Dotti described a house that his mother once owned in Italy. “I live there,” he told AD. “It used to be the gardener’s house to a bigger house designed in the ’50s by Michele Busiri Vici. At the time my mother bought it in ’79 or ’80, nobody wanted to live in a small house like this. But now, it’s unique. It’s like being in the country inside of the city.”

Photo: Jimi Celeste/PatrickMcMullan.com

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Charlotte Moss

Also attending the Snowflake Ball, designer Charlotte Moss mentioned the Queen’s Hamlet at Versailles. “The Mill—it’s the aura,” she said. “The whole dichotomy of a queen being a milkmaid, it’s so perverse. And it was created to look aged from the beginning.”

Rupert Sanderson

While being fêted by jewelry designer Ann Dexter-Jones at her home, shoe designer Rupert Sanderson mentioned David Kohn, a London architect. “He has done some amazing work,” said Sanderson. “He put a boat on top of the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre. It’s a hotel room, a temporary thing, but it’s booked. It’s a really beautiful collaboration with the artist Fiona Banner.”

Lindsay Ellingson

At the Snowflake Ball, Victoria’s Secret model Lindsay Ellingson named a monumental fountain in Dubrovnik. “The Onofrio fountains by Onofrio della Cava,” she said. “I was on vacation there two summers ago. It’s so beautiful. And the IAC building in New York by Frank Gehry. I love my neighborhood because I see the reflection of the sky and the water in it.”

Pictured here is a fountain by Onofrio della Cava in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Bobby Cannavale

After mentioning that he had first watched Blue Jasmine alone in Woody Allen’s private screening room, actor Bobby Cannavale, tie-free at the Gotham Awards, picked an undulating project by Thom Mayne and associate architect Gruzen Samton at 41 Cooper Square. “The new Cooper Union building that was built a couple of years ago,” he said. “I love that!”

Julie Delpy

Wearing a striking red strapless gown at the Gotham Awards, Julie Delpy, star and cowriter of Before Midnight, indicated that when it comes to architecture, she’s a midcentury modernist. “Would it be boring if I said the Eames Case Study House [#8]?” she asked.

Angie Harmon

Actress Angie Harmon, dressed in Angel Sanchez at Cipriani for the Snowflake Ball, brought up a quirky house called the Balancing Barn near the coast of Suffolk, England. “Half of it is built on a hill, and the other half hangs out,” she said. “They put a swing underneath. Half the house is in the air. It’s very, very cool.”

Brie Larson

Short Term 12 star Brie Larson, who won Best Actress at the Gotham Awards, offered a nod to the Parthenon. “It’s mathematically perfect, appealing to the eye, and such a solid structure,” she noted. “It also inspired so many architects to create things, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion. Frank Lloyd Wright also borrowed those proportions.”

Pictured here is the Parthenon temple on the Athenian Acropolis, in Greece.

Kathryn Hahn

Kathryn Hahn, a Breakthrough Actor nominee at the Gotham Awards for Afternoon Delight, gave a shout-out to a modernist structure in Los Angeles. “I love the Department of Water and Power downtown. That’s a crazy chic building,” she said. “It looks like cement on sticks.”

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

At the Gotham Awards, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who plays Nash in the upcoming remake of Annie, said he was currently shooting the film on location in New York. “We shot in the Guggenheim the other day. It’s still so contemporary. And we just shot in the new World Trade Center building, which is astonishing—not only the view, but how it is built. You feel like you’re in Alice in Wonderland when you’re up there.”

Forest Whitaker

It took only a moment for Forest Whitaker, star of The Butler, to name Notre Dame, the French Gothic cathedral in Paris, which was one of the first structures to implement the flying buttress. “I’ve been there many times,” he said at the Gotham Awards. “It’s beautiful.” And yes, he’s been to the top.

Richard Linklater

In the press room at the Gotham Awards, Before Midnight director Richard Linklater pared his choices down to three highly individual artists and architects: “Oh, man, the big architects in my life are: in Vienna, Friedensreich Hundertwasser (a painter turned Expressionist architect); in Barcelona, Antoni Gaudí; and I kind of like Dr. Seuss . . . I like his designs.”

Linklater is seen here at a screening of his film, Before Midnight. Also pictured is Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s Hundertwasserhaus, in Vienna.

Ralph Fiennes

Arriving at the Museum of Modern Art for the debut of The Invisible Woman, Ralph Fiennes, who plays Charles Dickens in the film, harked back to true classics. “My favorite architecture is ancient Greek,” he said. ”You don’t know who designed that, but I love the purity of classical Greek design, and I think it’s never been quite as good.”